The Beginning of the End?

Posted at 8:45 PM, Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Today has been the latest in a seemingly-endless series of drop-dead gorgeous days. The sky was a flawless blue, and the air had that special pure quality which seems almost unique to Australia. It was perfect in every way.

Today as well, "The Adelaide Advertiser's" cover story was River Screams Out For Help!" The article outlined fears that the Murray River, chief source of drinking and irrigation water for South Australia, may become too salty to drink by next month. Not next decade, not next year. Next month. And just yesterday, the same newspaper ran an interview with South Australia water security minister Karlene Maywald who announced that Adelaide's reservoirs have enough water to cover our basic water needs for...um...nine months. None of this sounds too good to me, but so far I haven't seen anyone running panicking through the streets.

I thought we were doing really well rain-wise, but it turns out I was wrong. A quick investigation of www.wundeground.com for Adelaide reveals that we had terrific rainfalls in April and May. Only 1.75 inches of rain fell in June, another 1.75 inches in July, and a measly .60 inches for August. This may have been enough moisture to make my garden very happy, but has been nowhere near enough to replenish the thirsty river or empty reservoirs. Chances are good that within a month or two, we will see the start of indoor water restrictions, meaning that the per-person water usage in houses will be closely monitored. "The Advertiser" has already outed homes in the region that use the largest amount of water.

Being right in the middle of this crisis is extremely frustrating because a) there's nothing much I can do about it and b) it's obvious what might have been done in the past to prevent or ease the current crisis. It has been clear for decades that the waters of the Murray were not a limitless resource, but no state or federal government has had the guts to pass that rather significant piece of information on to the farmers, miners, and manufacturers who were relying on an endless water supply.

To me, it is positively insane that so much of Australia's agriculture, as well as Adelaide itself, relies upon a river for its water. But that's the way it is. In the last fifty years, as the population of Adelaide has doubled, no state government has invested the money necessary to make sure that the water supply doubled as well. When the rain was pouring down in April, thousands upon thousands of gallons of wonderful, drinkable water were washing out to sea with no mechanism in place to hold on to them. Houses older than a certain age are almost always equipped with rainwater tanks, which gather the rain runoff from gutters to assure a supply of water for the home. But such tanks went out of fashion quite a few decades ago, and very few builders even offer the option on new construction projects.

Bobby, as usual, is much less worried about the situation than I am. He believes that Australian ingenuity will prevail, and that the admittedly formidable scientific minds in this country will devise one or more solutions to this little problem. I certainly hope he turns out to be right. Jared Diamond is cynical but nevertheless hopeful in his work "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed." He describes how white Australians have mined their country for the last two hundred years--stripping the land of its natural resources rather than sustaining them so that they would remain available for the future. Hence, the mass deforestation of the land, the draining of the water supplies, the overfishing of its waters, and so on. I would love to say that this no longer happens, but I can't. Right now, a debate is raging about whether a pulp mill should be built in Tasmania, which by general agreement is one of the very most beautiful corners of Australia. The goal is for most of the trees pulped to come from plantations planted for this purpose. But a significant percentage of the trees utilized will also be from Tasmania's old-growth forests. Just imagine, the continent with the smallest percentage of forest in the world building a toxic-waste-spewing mill specifically to chew up its trees. We'll see whether this country comes to its senses before it's too late--if it isn't already!